Isamaya Ffrench

Isamaya Ffrench (born 1989) is a British make-up artist and creator of wearable art. She has worked on fashion editorials for several major publications, including Vogue, Dazed, W magazine and Love.[1] Her subjects have included musicians Björk and Rihanna,[2][3] and models Kendall and Kylie Jenner.[4][5] Her principal focus is on facial art and decoration that challenges beauty norms.[6]

Born and raised in Cambridge, England, she became interested in physical arts from a young age and moved to London to study 3D design at the Chelsea College of Arts, then product and industrial design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.[1] She also joined the Theo Adams Company in 2010.[7][8] She was inspired by Kevyn Aucoin's The Art of Makeup, Making Faces, which she saw at age seven,[9] but did not focus on make-up in her youth, being more interested in other physical art, springboard diving,[10] and ballet.[11] While studying in London she decided to learn face painting to earn money part-time. She started face painting at children's parties and her skill at the craft resulted in her doing the job for children from London high society.[9]

She moved into painting adults faces soon after, and worked on the 2011 spring/summer menswear show for fellow Central Saint Martins alumnus Christopher Shannon.[12] After doing an all-body tiger body painting for a friend, a fellow dancer in her company suggested her to i-D magazine, which resulted in Ffrench's first fashion photography shoot in mid-2011 doing body painting and clay sculpture for Matthew Stone and Alek Wek. She worked alongside a professional make-up artist during the shoot, which led her to purchase her own kit and move towards face decoration. Having come from a physical arts background, she was less interested in beauty conventions and more interested in face decoration as a form of identity construction and working with the structure of the face.[13][10] She broadened into window dressing with a display for Liberty's for London Fashion Week in 2013.[1]

She continued to work for I-D and became the magazine's beauty editor in April 2014.[12] She also uses nature themes for her facial art, such as landscapes and forests.[12][11] Ffrench left I-D in 2015 and became ambassador for YSL Beauté, Yves Saint Laurent's cosmetics range that same year. She was appointed Creative Artist Consultant for Tom Ford Beauty in October 2016, where she created the Extrême line including metallic coloured lip lacquers and eye shadow.[9] In 2018 Ffrench became creative director for the newly-launched Dazed Beauty section of Dazed magazine.[1]

In 2019 she expressed an interest in the intersection of beauty and genetics, particularly the impact of racial diversity and gender diversity upon beauty norms, and physical health as a status symbol.[13]